Chance wet his lips. He let out a long sigh, one of relief. The answer he had expected was She’s dead.
“I figure we’ll be going after him.” Albavera pulled Chance to his feet.
“I’m going after her.”
“I’m riding with you.”
Their eyes locked. Albavera pointed south. “Juan Lo Grande and about ten or twelve of his men rode after them.”
“Damn.”
“Uh-huh. And we don’t have any horses.”
“Sure we do.” Chance pointed at several riderless mounts. “Already saddled.”
“Well, before we light out of here, you’d better come with me. It’s Don Melitón.”
The old man’s eyes slowly opened, saw Rodney Kipperman kneeling over him, his hands bloody. He searched the faces of the vaqueros who stood, shading him with their sombreros, solemn. At last, his eyes landed on Dave Chance.
“I am dying,” he spoke quietly.
Chance’s eyes dropped briefly. “I am sorry, Don Melitón.”
Don Melitón answered with a curse more in line with a Missouri bushwhacker than a Spanish nobleman. “I want no pity.” He swallowed, let out a little cough, and braced himself against the pain. For a long time, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, his lips pressed together, sweat peppering his forehead. Rodney Kipperman, the Marathon merchant, wrapped strips of linen across the old man’s bare chest.
“How is he?” asked someone in the crowd.
“I ain’t no doctor,” Kipperman snapped. “But you heard him.”
The don’s eyes opened again. “I want you, Sergeant Chance, to find the man who has killed me.”
“That I plan on doing, Don Melitón.”
The old man’s head shook with surprising strength. “It was not Lo Grande. It was your capitán, Hec Savage.”
“I figured that. I’ll find him.”
“Find him. Kill him.”
“You got my word.”
“Our word,” Albavera added.
“This I want . . . more than I want to avenge the death of my son.” His eyes moved to Moses Albavera. “You were right. Both of you. My son was worthless.” He coughed.
“My vaqueros will attend to matters here. They will take me home”—the old man’s voice began to fade—“to die. With dignity.”
“Sí, patrón,” one of the vaqueros said.
“They will not molest you,” Don Melitón said, and weakly lifted a finger toward Albavera. “You . . . are . . . free. . . .” He closed his eyes again, and his muscles relaxed.
Kipperman bent his head to the old man’s chest. When he straightened, he said, “He ain’t dead. Not yet anyhow.”
A bearded vaquero knelt. “We will attend el patrón.”
Kipperman and all the Anglos in the crowd were dismissed. Slowly, Kipperman stood, wiping his bloody hands on a cloth rag. “You want us to come with you, Ranger?”
“No.” Chance shook his head.
“Are you out of your damned mind?” Albavera whispered in his ear. “Savage isn’t alone. One of his Rangers rode out after him. Tall man with a big rifle.”
“Doc Shaw,” Chance said, guessing.
“That evens the odds, but we need to think about Lo Grande. He has a dozen men. Maybe more.” Albavera put his hand on Chance’s right shoulder. “We could use all the help we can get, pard.”
Stubbornly, Chance pulled away from the big Moor. “Mickey McGee’s lying over yonder, dead with a broken back. Don Melitón’s lying here, about to be called to Glory. I’m not getting any other volunteers, any other amateurs, killed, Moses. Hec Savage is a professional. I’ll do this alone.”
“Not alone,” Albavera said. “I’m a pro, too.”
Chance faced the merchant. “I appreciate the offer, Mr. Kipperman, but I think it would be best if you and these men handled things here. Take Mickey McGee’s body. Take real good care of Mickey.” His voice started to crack. He stopped.
What was that he had told Moses Albavera? About the graveyard in Marathon? It will get even more crowded before I’m all done. Something like that. Only he had never expected one of those graves to be for a friend of his. He certainly hadn’t planned on seeing Don Melitón Benton dead.
Without waiting for an answer from Kipperman, without another word, Chance spun on his heel, and started walking to a horse. Moses Albavera quickly caught up with him. “You can’t even saddle your own horse. Not with that arm of yours.”
“Like I said, the horse is already saddled.”
He stopped by a dead man, pried a lever-action rifle from the man’s hands. He worked the lever, blew dust off the rifle, and eased down the hammer. It was an 1881 Marlin, .40-60 caliber. Held ten shots. The dead man had a bandolier across his chest. And a Ranger badge. He looked at the dead man a little more closely.
“Munge McSween,” he said, and jerked off the badge, pinning it to his own vest, replacing the one Don Melitón had ripped off back in Marathon. He fumbled with the buckle to the bandolier before Albavera mumbled something, and dropped beside him. “Here. Let me do that.”
Chance didn’t protest. Ten minutes later, they were riding south.
It felt like someone was slicing the bones in her feet and legs with razors. Tears of pain blinded her as she bit down tightly on the stick Hec Savage had put in her mouth. The fire in her legs burned harder, and she broke the stick with her teeth, spit it out, cursed. Her fingers clawed into the hot sand. She prayed she would pass out, but her prayers went unanswered.
There was a final moment of agony, and suddenly the pain lessened—but didn’t stop. Grace Profit figured she’d always be hurting, but those razors had quit cutting into her bones. Her fingers relaxed. She felt her head being lifted, felt a cool rag brushing the tears off her cheeks.
When Grace opened her eyes, she saw Hec Savage’s battered, bruised face.
“I don’t reckon you’ll be trying to run away from me,” he said with a smile. “Not with both of your ankles busted.”
The rag vanished. A moment later, Savage brought a pewter flask to her lips, and she drank. That seemed to dull the throbbing in her ankles. She drank some more.
“Easy.” Savage pulled the flask away from her, letting rye whiskey roll down her cheeks. “Save some for me, Grace.” He took a swig, and dropped the flask into his pocket. “How do you feel?”
She didn’t answer.
“Not much I can do.” He looked around at the desert. Grace followed his gaze. They were shaded by a mountain to the west. She heard water trickling over rocks, and guessed they were on Calamity Creek. The mountain looked like Elephant Mountain, but that would mean they’d traveled a far piece since . . .
Since . . . what?
She tried to remember. Since the train had . . . derailed.
No . . . there had been a collision. The face of the dead Ranger in the caboose popped into her mind. It was a miracle she had survived. She remembered the heat, the smoke, the caboose on fire. Pictured Savage carrying her out. Pictured the man Savage had shot off his horse, Don Melitón Benton.
Savage’s voice sounded tired. “I laced your boots up as tight as I could. That’s about all I can do. For now. Till I get you to some old sawbones.”
“In Argentina?” She realized those were the first words she had spoken. Her voice sounded strained.
Savage stared at her. The flask returned, but to Savage’s lips, not hers. After swallowing, he shook his head. “I don’t think one bar of gold bullion will get us all the way to Buenos Aires, honey.”
“We could go to Terlingua.” She swallowed. “Or, better yet, Fort Davis.”
He smiled. “They might hang me in Terlingua. Besides, that’s getting too close to Juan Lo Grande’s country. And they’d definitely do me grave harm were I to show my face in Fort Davis. No, I’m still thinking if we can make it to the Río Grande, cross it, we can follow that river east. You up for that, Grace?”
There was no time to answer. Hoofbeats sounded, and Savage lowered her gently to the ground, gave her
his hat as a pillow. He stood, drawing one of his Merwin Hulbert revolvers. She watched him step to the horse, using it as a shield, then heard the hammer click as he lowered it, and pushed the .44 into the holster.
The Ranger, Doc Shaw, rode into view, that big rifle cradled across his lap.
He eased the weary mount past the captain and Grace, and she heard the mount drinking water from the stream. Shaw grunted as he dropped from the saddle.
“Well?” Savage asked.
“Lo Grande’s got his men spread out. Cutting for sign.”
“How many men does he have?”
“I couldn’t tell. Eight at the least. Fifteen, sixteen at the most.” He drank water from a canteen. “But he could have some men south of here.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not that I saw.”
“All right.”
Shaw spit. “No, Captain, it ain’t all right. Our horses are worn out, and we can’t keep riding in Calamity Creek to hide our trail forever. Look at that water, Captain. This creek’ll be dry in two or three more miles. Besides, even if Lo Grande’s men can’t find our trail, it’ll be obvious what we’re doing. It’s not like we can follow this creek north.”
Silence. Grace tried to turn her head, but that made her legs hurt, so she gave up. Letting her head sink into Savage’s hat, she stared at her feet, let out a sigh, and listened.
“We get to the Big Bend, closer to the river, we can hide out,” Savage said. “Rest our horses.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know, Doc,” Savage thundered. “However the hell long it takes. Then we can sneak across the border, head east.”
The silence returned, shorter this time.
“It’s sixty,” Shaw said, “maybe eighty miles to the river.”
“I know that.”
“Weather’s warming up.”
“Weather’s not the only thing warming up,” Savage said. “I can feel Hell—so can you—if Lo Grande or the law catches us.”
Shaw let out a sigh. “More than two hundred thousand dollars in gold . . . just . . . pissed away.”
“Have a drink, Doc.”
“Is this what I traded my badge, maybe my life, for, Captain? Two fingers of tequila.”
“It’s Manhattan rye.”
“Oh, well, that makes it all worthwhile, don’t it?” She heard him drink, heard the empty flask drop into the creek. “How’s the strumpet?”
“She’s no strumpet, Doc. She’s a good woman.”
“How is she?”
“Both ankles busted. I got her boots on tight.”
“She can’t walk.”
No reply.
Shaw cleared his throat. “We’ve got Lo Grande’s men behind us, trailing us. Only a matter of time before they find us. By now, Colonel Thomas must have every Ranger, every sheriff, every marshal, every man in Texas who can handle a gun on a train bound for Marathon or Murphyville. And Don Melitón—”
Savage’s snort cut off Doc Shaw. The captain sounded jovial when he said, “We don’t have to worry about that old fool.”
Grace closed her eyes. She thought she might cry, not for her predicament, but for Don Melitón. He had always been a good man. To her, at least.
After that statement sunk in, Shaw continued. “Well, the Army will soon find out you didn’t leave anyone in Fort Leaton—anyone alive, that is—and they’ll be on your ass like a roadrunner on a rattlesnake. When I lit out after that wreck, there was a posse raising dust from Marathonway, and I bet Murphyville has raised a posse by now. And that big ass nigger, the one Dave Chance had with him, I spied him running alongside those rails, too.”
“The Moor?” Savage sounded skeptical. He recalled the name. “Moses Albavera?”
Opening her eyes, putting the memory of Don Melitón behind her, Grace laughed. “I told you Dave wasn’t dead.”
“Shut up.”
“She’s likely right, Captain,” Doc Shaw said. “I’m betting Bucky, Taw, and Eliot are either dead, or in jail. My guess is dead. They won’t be joining us, Captain. It’s just the two of us. To split . . . what, one bar of bullion? Eighty-four hundred dollars?”
“That’s still a hell of a lot of money. More than you’d make in five years.”
“Forty-two hundred, if we split it, Captain. Split it evenly. Either way, it won’t buy us nothing out here.”
Leather squeaked. She could imagine Savage resting his hands on the butts of his holstered revolvers. “You got something on your mind, Doc. A suggestion, I guess. Spit it out.”
“We’ve got two horses, and both are on their last legs. We’ve got a hard ride to the border. She’ll just slow us down. Get us caught. Get us killed. Now I know how much you appreciate a good woman, and I was raised that way, too. But it would be best for us to leave her behind.”
“Let Lo Grande’s men find her?” Bitterness accented Savage’s statement, and the thought left Grace trembling.
“We could shoot her. Or slit her throat.”
“No. I won’t harm the fairer sex, especially a fine figure of a woman like Grace Profit.”
“We could leave her here in the shade. Or hidden in the rocks up on Elephant Mountain. Maybe Lo Grande’s men won’t find her. Hell, we can leave her a pistol. She can defend herself better than a lot of men I know. Or, God willing, when Lo Grande’s men are gone, someone will be sure to come by, looking for us. She could fire a shot, bring some men, white men, to her. Get those busted legs of hers tended to.”
More silence. The captain was considering it.
“The point is, Captain, we’re three people with only two horses that are half dead. We’ll never make it to Mexico that way.”
The wind blew. The water flowed.
Captain Savage let out a weary sigh. “You’re right, Doc.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The body lay facedown in the creek, the head partially buried in the sand, naked, the ears cut off. When Moses Albavera turned the corpse over, he discovered another indignity.
“God,” he said, dropping the dead man. “His pecker’s been cut off and stuck in his mouth.”
“I got eyes.” Chance swung off the dun, wrapping the reins around a large rock. He felt relief. When Albavera had first spotted the circling buzzards that morning, he had feared they would find Grace Profit underneath Elephant Mountain. He waded into the stream, letting the trickling water soak his moccasins, and knelt, massaging his left shoulder as he looked at what once had been Doc Shaw.
He put his hand on the corpse’s head, turned it slightly. “Skull’s smashed. That’s probably what killed him. But Savage slit his throat just to be sure.”
“Why’d he do the . . . rest?”
Chance rose. “He didn’t. That’s the handiwork of some of Lo Grande’s boys. Help me get him out of this creek.”
He vocalized his theory while Albavera dragged Shaw’s body to an arroyo that ran alongside the mountain into the creek. “Savage, Grace, and Shaw stopped here, probably to rest and water their horses. Two horses. Three riders. Something had to give, and that turned out to be Doc Shaw’s head.” Savage had brained him, but Chance had to give the captain some credit. Doc Shaw was looking at him when his skull got caved in. That meant Savage knew Lo Grande’s men were close by, on his trail. He used stone and knife, rather that one of those .44s. A shot would carry a long way out there, and bring Lo Grande right to them.
“They found him anyway.” Albavera let Shaw’s feet fall onto the water-smoothed rocks.
“Yeah.” Shaw climbed out of the arroyo, and made a beeline to a mound of horse apples. “Cut off his ears as trophies. Robbed him of his clothes, everything, including his dignity. That’s why they cut off his dick.” He knelt, picked up a turd, and broke it open, testing the moisture with his fingers, then dropped the crap, and wiped his hands on his chaps. “They’re four hours ahead of us, or thereabouts.”
“And Savage?”
Chance shrugged. “I don’t know. But I doubt if he has
much of a head start.” He walked to the dun, gathered the reins, and pulled himself into the saddle.
“What about him?” Albavera gestured at the dead man in the arroyo. “Should we bury him?”
“Doc didn’t bother burying Ray Wickes.” Chance kicked the dun into a walk.
Albavera took a final glance at the body before walking to the blood bay mare.
About a hundred yards downstream, Chance pointed toward some tracks in the sand that pointed northeast. One of Lo Grande’s riders—he guessed there were four others who had butchered Doc Shaw’s corpse—had taken off to find Lo Grande and the others, and let them know they had found Savage’s trail.
“So”—Albavera pulled the sawed-off Springfield from his holster—“this party’ll be even bigger.”
Nodding, Chance drew his Schofield.
The Marlin shot high, but Chance still managed to kill a scrawny mule deer late the next afternoon. They made an early camp, resting the horses while Chance butchered the deer and roasted steaks.
“You think that fire’s a good idea?” Albavera asked.
“My stomach thinks so.”
“Well, at least the weather’s decent.”
Two days later, a blue norther hit, dropping the temperature forty degrees in less than an hour, turning the Big Bend region into a sheet of ice. The wind blew furiously, lashing out as Hec Savage helped Grace Profit into the saddle. Sleet stung like rock salt. Frigid air burned their lungs with each breath.
“Keep your head bent low,” Savage called to her. “We’ll be inside a warm building, sipping hot coffee, eating warm tortillas in an hour.”
She looked at him. Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear her over the roaring wind. Somewhere, the limb of a juniper cracked, broken by the weight of ice. Savage raised a gloved hand to his ear.
“I can’t feel my legs.”
That was probably a good thing, he figured. He’d seen her legs earlier that day. The bruises, deep purple, even black in places, had reached halfway up her calves.
After transferring the contents of his coat pocket to the empty pockets of his vest, Savage pulled off his coat, and draped it over her back. “Just hold onto the horn,” he told her, and mounted his own horse. He grabbed the reins of her mount, and pulled horse and rider behind him.
West Texas Kill Page 24
